


Atrium

by commoncomitatus



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 7 [4]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Divided Loyalties, F/F, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 10:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7973248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag for "Motherhood".  Aphrodite's thoughts as she looks after Gabrielle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atrium

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com) Round 7.  
> Prompt: Unconsciousness

—

It’s a selfish, stupid decision.

The gods are dying. Her _family_ is dying, soul by immortal soul, and the few that are still alive are waging an all-out war against Xena and her unnatural spawn. It should be a no-brainer that she’d be fighting with them. She’s one of them, isn’t she? What’s to say she won’t be next? They’ve already taken Poseidon, Hephaestus, even Zeus; what’s the goddess of love next to the god of gods?

It shouldn’t be a question. It shouldn’t be a conversation or a thought or even just a fleeting moment of doubt. It shouldn’t be anything, let alone this. They’re her blood, or whatever passes for blood in gods’ veins… and woah, that’s another thought she really doesn’t want to be having: they can bleed now. _She_ can bleed now. Flawless though she’s sure her blood is, it’s not something she really wants to spread around.

It’s obvious, then. Even a total idiot could figure this one out: she should be with her family, the ones who bleed immortal like she does. She should be out there on the front lines with Athena, with Ares and Deimos and Hades and Artemis, with all of them. She should be standing back-to-back with her family, but she’s not.

Instead, she’s _here_ , the one place she shouldn’t be, doing the one thing she shouldn’t be doing, helping out the bard babe so Xena can focus on killing her immortal family. Her heart should be with them, but here it is, bleeding in rhythm with the mortal in her lap.

There’s no two ways about it: she’s on the wrong side. What that makes her, she doesn’t know yet, but that much is set in stone. And yeah, sure, she feels bad about it, but what else can she do? Her place has never been on a battlefield; if she went out there now she wouldn’t even know where to begin.

What can she say? She’s a lover, not a fighter.

It’s kind of funny when she thinks about it like that. War is Ares’s department, but Aphrodite has a not-so-sneaking suspicion that he’s just as upset about this one as she is. There’s not a soul on Olympus who doesn’t know about his little ‘thing’ for the warrior babe, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that going up against her like this is hitting him pretty hard. True enough, he always thrives best when there’s sparks and swords and blood flying everywhere, but it’s a whole nother story when some of that blood belongs to the mortal you kind of sort of maybe care about.

Huh. Who’d’ve thunk that they’d have that in common?

Go fig, though, that Ares would be the one doing the right thing for once. It’s probably the first time in his life he’s picked the good side, and of course it’s gotta be the one time she picks the bad. Not that she should be surprised, really; don’t they always end up on opposite sides when love puts people to war? What kind of omniscient deity couldn’t see this one coming?

She doesn’t know what this little pseudo-betrayal will mean for her in the big picture. Assuming there’s any big picture left to look at when this is over, of course, and isn’t that a giant leap of faith right now? It’s not exactly likely that any one of them will even survive long enough to care, but still she lets herself wonder because it’s better than looking down and seeing the blood pooling in her lap.

She doesn’t know much of anything, really, but she knows that by being here instead of there she’s effectively throwing her hands up. It wouldn’t matter if she turned around and smote Eve all by herself ( _shyeah, right, like that’s gonna happen_ ); she picked her side by being here, taking care of a mortal in the moment her fellow gods are fighting for their lives. She’s made her bed; all she can do now is lie in it and hope all that blood doesn’t stain the sheets.

Not that she can afford to think about any of that right now. If she wonders too much, she might do something she’ll regret, something that goes against everything she is.

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? She might be a blood traitor, but at least by being here she’s being true to herself. She’s doing what she’s always done, the only thing she’s ever done: she’s showing _love_. It might be the wrong kind, pointed in the wrong direction, but it’s hers and it’s true and it’s all she’s got.

It’s no different, she tells herself, from what Ares is doing. Or, well, okay, so maybe it’s mondo different, given the circumstances. But she can no more turn back from her nature than he can let his feelings for Xena steer him away from bloodshed and brutality. He’s got his burden to bear and she’s got hers too; there are some things even the gods can’t change.

They’re both doing what’s right for them, the only thing they can do. It just kinda sucks, that’s all, being the goddess of love in the middle of a war.

Athena will call her something far worse than traitor when she finds out about this; the line has been drawn quite clearly, at least as far as she’s concerned, and her infinite wisdom has never shown much patience for nuance. Ares will say she’s going soft; Aphrodite wishes she could be just a little bit more like him so she could look him in the eye and say that for once it’s not about that. Of course love can be soft; duh, right? It can be the softest thing in the world. But it can be wicked powerful, too, and they both know it’s the only thing that’s ever stopped War in his tracks.

It’s only when she looks down at Gabrielle’s pain-soaked face that she realises this war stopped her in hers as well.

She hates this. The war itself, duh, but _this_ part of it specifically. Gabby’s the last person in the world who deserves a fate like this, but here she is, bleeding and unconscious and _dying_. It’ll be slow and painful, Aphrodite knows, a torture that can only end one way, and there’s nothing this all-powerful goddess can do to stop it.

That’s Athena’s fault, and it’s the one piece of this terrible little puzzle that stops Aphrodite feeling too bad about the side she’s chosen. She knows Athena well, and she recognise the twisted thing she’s become (no, _becoming_ ; she can’t let herself believe she’s truly lost, can’t accept that she’s beyond saving). Athena won’t stop until Eve is dead, crazed and blinded by vengeance and spite, obsessed with preventing a prophecy any idiot could see she’s brought on herself.

She hasn’t been the same since Zeus’s death. Aphrodite understands the burden of that, knows how much more of it fell to Athena than anyone else. She was his successor, the one weighted with the future of Olympus. Small wonder, in the chaos that followed his death, that the rest of them started looking to her for guidance. The goddess of wisdom has become a fool, though, and now she won’t listen to anyone. It’s a different kind of heartbreak, a different kind of loss; Athena, once the sanest of them all has fallen to such madness that she might never find her way back.

Aphrodite went to her when she started this. She could see where it was heading, and she knew what Athena was planning. She knew that her own pleas were futile, but she didn’t expect to feel as frightened as she did when she whispered, _“Can we leave the bard out of this?”_. And, well, maybe time has taken its toll on her as well, because she didn’t realise until that moment, until Athena said the words, that she had fallen under her own stupid spell.

 _Love_. It’s such a blessing when it’s right, but what a terrible curse when it’s not. She should know that better than anyone.

Gabrielle stirs under her hands, moaning in her unconsciousness. There’s blood everywhere, and Aphrodite can feel the pain pulsing through it as if it were hers too. She should have anticipated this, too; what kind of love deity doesn’t recognise her own side-effects?

Love isn’t just about warmth and compassion. It never was. It’s not just the heady drunkenness of new romance or old friendships; it’s sharing the bad things too, the things that cause the worst kinds of pain. Love can feel everything, and it’s a good thing goddesses don’t need to breathe because Aphrodite isn’t sure she could if she tried. It hurts. She’s not even supposed to know what pain feels like, but she knows that this _hurts_.

She closes her eyes to block out the sight and the pain it causes, dabbing futilely at the open wound on Gabby’s head, and wishes with all her oversized heart that she could be less of a coward.

She wanted to fight. For just a moment, brief and terrible though it was, she wanted to take up arms and take her place at Athena’s side, Gabrielle and everyone else be damned. When she felt Hephaestus die from way up there on Mount Olympus, she wanted so desperately to throw away everything she was, everything she’d ever been, and give in to that feeling, that vengeful, vicious, violent rage. She wanted to be like Athena, blind with it, mad with it; she wanted to be like Ares, thriving on it, living for it. She wanted to hate Xena and Eve and everyone and everything that had ever touched either one of them. She wanted to hate _Gabby_.

But wanting is never enough all on its own, and Aphrodite just doesn’t have those terrible things inside her.

The only thing she has is love. That’s it. And without Hephaestus, without Zeus and Poseidon and the others, with her whole family being torn away from her piece by piece, her supply of the stuff is getting thinner by the second. Athena is twisted, and Ares is always in his element when he’s bathed in mortal blood; the others are falling in droves, and Aphrodite just wants so badly for the hating and the violence and the dying to stop.

No chance of that with Eve running around, though. She might be blonde, but she’s not dumb, and even she knows that.

So she does what little she can with a fast-dwindling supply of the thing that’s kept her alive for millennia. She can’t stop this thing that others started, can’t dam an unstoppable tide, so instead she finds herself here, doing what little she can to stem a different kind of flood, the one pouring out of Gabrielle’s head. It’s not much, but it’s all she can offer, a little bit of love in a moment when everyone and everything she ever cared about is at war.

It’s not a coincidence she’s here, and it’s definitely not a coincidence that Gabby is the turning point, the one line she can’t bring herself to cross, not even for her fellow gods. Gabrielle is special, and not just because of her connection to Xena; she’s _Aphrodite’s_ , just as much as Xena is Ares’s. Every god has a weakness, after all, and weakness is always so tragically mortal. Aphrodite has never been ashamed of the way she loves, but choosing Gabrielle’s mortal blood over her own immortal kin is the hardest thing it’s ever made her do.

It’s hard. It hurts. It’s _horrible_. But here she is just the same. Taking care of Gabrielle, her little bard, because when she looks down at her and feels that awful pain as if it were her own she remembers what love is supposed to be, what it means, how important it is. It doesn’t matter which side wins this stupid, petty war; if there’s no love left at the end of it, the winners won’t have anything to celebrate. She has to cling to the feeling; she has to cling to _herself_ , and the only way she can do that is by holding Gabby, by holding her bloody, broken pieces together, by holding on and never, ever letting go.

She wishes she could mend her properly, just knit the bones and the flesh with a wave of her hand. Yesterday she would have done it in a heartbreat, but today the price is too high.

Athena will never, ever allow it. Healing without her blessing is a sin punishable not by death but by mortality; it’s the worst fate a goddess like Aphrodite can imagine. She has the universe at her fingertips; when she closes her eyes she can hear the stars sing. Strip that away from her, and it’s like stripping away every one of her senses; she’d be blind and deaf and dumb, worthless and helpless and ageing and _no, please not that, anything but that_.

Let Xena slaughter her with the others if she has to die; at least the warrior babe will make it quick.

It’s tragic, really. Losing a mortal is a terrible thing; losing this one is pain beyond measure. But becoming one herself? That’s her worst nightmare, and she is too much of a coward to go through it by choice. A coward and a traitor, a selfish shallow shadow of a goddess. Yeah, that’s her. But when did she ever claim to be anything more?

She can’t heal. She can’t even take away the pain. All she can do is care and love.

So that’s what she does. She kneels there, cradling Gabby’s bleeding, broken head in her lap and pouring as much of herself as she can spare into that awful, ugly hole in her skull.

It’s the worst feeling in the world, giving up everything she has and knowing that it’s still not enough, that nothing short of mortality will fix this. Aphrodite has never felt so helpless, so hopeless, so _angry_ in all the eternities she’s lived. Maybe that’s why Ares clings so hard to his machismo, that _‘I’m better than you because I’ve got a big sword’_ shtick that drives the rest of them so crazy. Maybe it’s because he knows, in a way she never really did until now, that bravado is all any of them really have.

She never really got that before, but she definitely gets it now. She’d give anything for something like that, a way of pretending she’s stronger than she is. She wants a sword like Ares has, something big and tough and made of steel, something she can cling to and hide behind and imagine it can transform the world into any fancy new shape she wants. Love can do a lot of things, but when it comes to pain, sometimes all it does is make it worse.

Gabrielle makes another sound, soft but strong, like a struggle. Aphrodite strokes her cheek, then her forehead; the blood doesn’t touch her immortal fingers, sliding off the fabric of her gloves before it can leave a stain, and for the first time in her life she wishes it wouldn’t do that. There’s no sense in getting gross and dirty if she doesn’t have to, of course, but it hurts so much to know that she’ll always be kept separate from Gabrielle’s mortal, messy pain.

“It’s gonna be all right,” she hears herself say, and wonders why she sounds so old and worn. “It’s just a little flesh wound.”

It’s not. It’s not little, and it’s not a flesh wound, and even a goddess can’t turn lies into truths by wishing they were so. But what else can she do? Tell the poor bard she’s dying? Admit that she won’t be the only one, that either Aphrodite or her beloved Xena will be joining her before too long? Laugh and say _‘at least you’re in good company’_? 

It’s all true, every word of it, but it feels so heartless to say it out loud. Not that it would matter anyway, even if she poured out the truth in all its bitter glory. Gabrielle is still unconscious, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. From the look of her, it’s unlikely that she’ll ever open her eyes again. Aphrodite thinks the world will be much darker without them, no matter who wins this war.

For Gabby, maybe it’s a sort of blessing, not being awake to suffer through the pain and the blood and all the icky mess, but to a goddess who has always thrived on companionship the silence where the bard once sang is the very worst kind of torture.

“You know, I’m sacrificing a lot for you,” she tells her, because she has to fill the silence somehow and Gabby isn’t exactly cooperative in her present state. “That’s my family your warrior babe is slaughtering out there. I should be fighting with them, watching their backs, doing _something_. But noooo, instead I get stuck here with you and all that icky, gross blood.”

It stings more than she wants to admit. Not just the part about where she should be, where her loyalties should lie, but the cleaner, simpler truth behind the complex, convoluted, messy one.

 _Your warrior babe._ It’s a beautiful thing, and it should reignite a little of the old love inside of her. The truth of it is like a lightning bolt, like Zeus brought back to life, and Aphrodite knows better than anyone else, mortal or otherwise, that there’s nothing in any world that can stand between those two. (Not even a chakram to the head, go fig.) It should be a comfort, should make her feel strong and selfless, but somehow it doesn’t. The world needs all the love it can get right now, and Aphrodite can’t afford to be picky. Xena and Gabrielle are the kind of love story that would make the poets… that would make the _gods_ jealous.

She shouldn’t be jealous. She’s never felt that way before, not over a mortal. But she looks down, and there’s Gabby, unconscious and unmoving and dying and Xena’s the one who did it, Xena’s the one who made it happen, and all Aphrodite can think is _I’m here, not her. I’m here and I’ve got you and I love you_.

She wonders if this is how Ares feels when he moons over Xena. Actually, being who she is and specialising in what she does, she knows that it is. He’s been chasing her forever — and in the language of the gods, that’s really saying something — and Aphrodite has always given him such a hard time for being so weak to love when he’s supposed to be its exact opposite. She’s always known that he’s helpless, that everyone is when she has her hands on or in something, but still she feels like it’s a sister’s duty to make fun of her lovesick brother.

She’s not making fun of him now. Gods and their mortals; it’s a recurring theme. Aphrodite has rolled around with more than her fair share of less than godly lovers, but she’s always flattered herself that she knows where the line is drawn. Heck, she’s the one who drew it in the first place. Gods belong with their own kind, mortals with theirs; that’s just the way it has to be. Anything else… well, Zeus himself could tell you where that path leads. It’s just not worth the price.

Messing around with mortals is one thing, though. Messing around with Xena and Gabrielle? _Jeez_.

Mortal or no, that’s a pairing no god or goddess should ever come between. Love or War, it doesn’t really matter; those two are as timeless as Olympus (and, depending on how this battle turns out, maybe even more so). Aphrodite has known that for a long time, and not just because she’s an all-seeing goddess; she knows it because she’s the goddess of _love_ , because love is what she is. It breathes in her, makes her closer to mortal than probably any of the others, and she’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see it in them. Xena and Gabby, they just _are_. And they always will be.

She knows it, sure. It’s written in the very fabric of who she is. But how is she supposed to hold ties to the perfect eternal romance that is the warrior babe and bodacious bard when Xena’s the one who did this? It’s her fault that Gabby is lying unconscious in Aphrodite’s arms right now, her fault that she’s bloody and icky and gross, that she’s unconscious and silent and scaring her. It’s her fault that she’s _dying_.

The thought makes Aphrodite feel faint, for probably a million different reasons. She’s never known the kind of fear that grips her now. She didn’t even feel it when Zeus died, when all the gods on Olympus learned for the very first time that they could bleed and die as well. It didn’t hit her then, but it hits her now, and she hates herself all the more for that. So many of her brethren are dead, with so many more about to die, but somehow it’s this silly, idealistic mortal that will break her. When Gabby dies—

“ _No_ ,” she hears herself whisper, run through by the word. She can’t even finish the thought, so afraid it will become truth. “No, I didn’t mean that, sweet pea. You’re not really gonna die, I promise. I won’t let you.”

Oh, how she wishes she meant that; oh, how she wishes she _could_. Her promises have always been hollower than most, though, and this is the hollowest of her life.

 _I’m sorry,_ she thinks, but she doesn’t have the courage to say the words out loud, to turn them into something she can’t take back and can’t will away. If mortals can read minds like the gods can, Gabrielle knows what she’s feeling. If they can’t, then the guilt and the shame will just have to remain a secret of the gods.

If she does know or if she doesn’t, Gabrielle doesn’t say a word. She probably wouldn’t, Aphrodite thinks, even if she wasn’t unconscious. It makes her job harder, but it makes the guilt a little easier to swallow too, knowing that Gabby is in no condition to judge her for her lack of strength. Still, the fluttering of her eyelids seems to speak in a language all its own, not of love but of war, a desperate struggle against the pain and the dark frightening place where it ends.

“Oh, little one.” Aphrodite closes her eyes to block out the blood, and sighs. “You know I can’t do it. You and me, we’re, like, besties or something. So you gotta get it. You understand. It’s the only thing in the world I can’t give you. The only thing. I’d give you the world if you asked for it, Gabs, but _that_ …”

She swallows, though she doesn’t need to, and shakes her head. Gabrielle, of course, still doesn’t speak. She’s so still, her breath so shallow. Aphrodite doesn’t know whether to be sad that she’s so broken or thankful that she’s not calling her out.

“Look,” she goes on. “It’s nothing personal. You get that too, right? You gotta get it.” She doesn’t know why it comes out so defensive, why she feels like she’s being challenged by a motionless, unconscious, dying mortal, but somehow she does. “It’s just… aw, you’ve seen this bodacious bod! It’s not made for mortality. Jeez, you know that already. You did it to me once before. Like, you saw what being mortal does to these curves. You saw it, Gabby, remember? _Remember_?”

Impossible though it is, she’s sure she can feel Gabrielle react just a little, the tiniest flicker somewhere deep under the surface, somewhere even the pain and the blood can’t reach. It’s probably just a muscle spasm or something like that, but Aphrodite’s imagination shapes it into something else, into memory and a wordless kind of laughter. A part of her knows it’s not really real, but she’s always been the god who understood where others didn’t just how precious a moment’s delusion can be.

“You do remember,” she whispers, capitalising on the feeling, clinging to it like Ares with his sword. “You and your stupid truth-making scroll. You remember that wacky ride…”

Well, okay, fine. Technically it was _her_ stupid truth-making scroll — or at least her stupid truth-making spell — but hey, who’s keeping score at a time like this? The important part is that it was Gabby’s words. What kind of bard wouldn’t remember that?

“You know how much of a drag it was,” she goes on, almost desperate. “You wouldn’t want me to go through that all over again, would you? Like, not for your sake. You’re all, like, selfless, and stuff. You’d never want someone else to go through _mortality_ for you.”

She doesn’t know whether to wish that Gabrielle could hear or be grateful that she’s so deep in her unconsciousness she never will.

On the one hand, if she could hear, maybe she’d agree. Maybe she’d roll her eyes or something, show in the only way she can that she’s okay with this, that it’s okay if Aphrodite doesn’t give up her godly glory to save her, that she does understand if a goddess wants to die the way she lived. Gabrielle is the giving kind, it’s so true, and if she’s totally honest Aphrodite doesn’t need to hear the words to know that she would never, ever ask for this kind of sacrifice. When it comes to mortals, she really picked a good one.

(Nah. She picked the _best_ one.)

Then again, the fact that she’s not saying any of that, the fact that she _can’t_ … well, doesn’t that just totally embody all the reasons why Aphrodite really should do this for her? It hurts to see her hurt, duh, but it hurts so much more to see her unconscious, not moving and only sort-of breathing and just… like, not here. Not _with her_. Aphrodite has talked to Gabrielle a lot, but she’s never once been met with this kind of silence.

“Come on, little one.” She doesn’t expect the tremor that catches in her voice. She’s a goddess; that sort of thing shouldn’t even be possible. “Tell me you get it. Please, _please_ … just tell me you understand.”

Gabrielle doesn’t, of course. Aphrodite wishes she could believe in what she knows of her, the bard that stole her glowing goddess’s heart. If their roles were reversed, Gabby would have so much faith; she knows she would. But then, Gabrielle has always been the best of them all, of mortals and gods alike, and Aphrodite… well, she’s just a shallow, selfish goddess with delusions of grandeur.

But then, isn’t that the other thing about this? About them? Vain, vacuous, vacant… whatever they call her — and schyeah, she’s all that, and more — Gabrielle always saw through it. All she ever had to do was look at her, and even when she couldn’t quite see through the ditzy dumb façade, still she caught the perfection glimmering underneath. Not the flawless goddess image she shows off to normal mortals, the ones who leave her sacrifices and offerings and all that other cheap stuff, but the real stuff, the stuff that matters. Gabrielle sees the purest perfection there is, the kind that exists not because she’s a goddess but because she is _love_.

Yeah, Gabby is hers all right. More than Xena was ever Ares’s, more than Ilainus was Athena’s, more than… more than anything in the world. At least, she is to her.

 _You’re mine,_ Aphrodite thinks. The thought is sharp and keen, like a blade inside her head and her heart, but she doesn’t say it aloud because that’s not something she wants anyone to overhear. Not Xena, not her sick spawn, not Athena or Ares or any of her fast-dwindling family. Most of all, not Gabrielle. Gabby’s place is elsewhere; Aphrodite can’t change that, and even if she could she knows she wouldn’t.

In that, if nothing else, she has to be selfless.

She holds her fingertips against Gabrielle’s temple, to the place that’s soaked through with blood. It’s not like her to be so chaste, so innocent when caring for someone she loves and it’s definitely not like her to touch places so dirty with sweat and blood and who even knows what else. She wants to wash the poor little bard, to at least make sure her final minutes are clean and sparkly, but she doesn’t. She knows what Xena would have to say about such a silly, frivolous thing, and for all that they’re kinda sorta mortal enemies right now (emphasis on the _mortal_ ), still Aphrodite cares too much for Gabby to ever do wrong by the warrior babe. They’re a couples’ package, and who’s the goddess of love to get between that?

No-one. In Zeus’s name — hey, even in her own — she’s never felt more like no-one, more like _nothing_ , than she does when her Gabrielle is staring up at Xena like she’s the real goddess.

 _It’s me,_ Aphrodite wants to scream sometimes. _Don’t you see?_

But then, of course, it’s not for Gabrielle to see. Aphrodite is the goddess, and she’s got to be the one who sees. Not just Gabby and not just Xena, but the two of them together and everything that means; she sees what they are and what they could be with a kind of clarity that only comes to immortals.

She sees them both, and the countless ways they’re meant to be, the countless ways a silly, sentimental goddess has no place in either of their lives. She wants to have a place in this, to make herself a colour in Gabrielle’s ever-changing tapestry; she knows how beautiful it’ll be when it’s complete, and _oh_ , Aphrodite wants that kind of immortality so badly. The special kind of godhood, elusive to her people, it only exists when a mortal dies and leaves the world forever changed. Aphrodite wants so, so much to be a part of something like that.

She wants to make a second home for herself in Gabrielle’s arms, even in her heart. She wants to take her to a safe place, a place far away from Athena and Olympus and all of this, even from Xena, but she knows she can’t. Not even the Fates can weave immortal threads.

Athena knew all this, of course. She saw it in Aphrodite’s eyes when she came to her before this all began. There was something almost cruel in the way she looked at her, mocking and pitying, and said, _“Do you have a soft spot for Gabrielle?”_

She knew the answer long before Aphrodite blushed, and they both knew that she wasn’t fooling either one of them when she shrugged it off. _“She’s my friend,”_ she said, like Athena of all people wouldn’t see the truth behind that.

It might not have been the right answer, but it is the truth. Sad though it is, Gabrielle _is_ her friend. She talks to her, listens to her, sometimes even laughs at her, but never with malice, and she never asks for anything in return. Aphrodite doesn’t know much about mortals, but she knows that’s what it means to be a friend. Giving without expectation, keeping someone’s company just because you kind of dig them. That’s the definition of friendship right there.

Then again, isn’t it also the definition of love?

She shakes her head, drives back the thought, the worthless, wistful wanting, and touches her fingertips to the skin on Gabrielle’s face. It’s getting cold now, and pale, blanching as the blood drains out of her; the stuff looks very dark, more so now than it did a moment ago, and it makes the bard look like she’s been carved out of porcelain. She’s so delicate like this, so fragile, so different to how she is when she’s conscious, when she’s smiling and shaking her head and so beautifully alive.

“You are my friend,” Aphrodite tells her, quiet like a secret, like something only between them. “I just wish…”

Ah, but what good are wishes to the girl who has everything?

Aphrodite wishes a lot of things. She wishes that her friend wasn’t on Xena’s side, or maybe that her family wasn’t on the other one. She wishes they could run away, just the two of them, to a place where the people they love would never kill or hurt each other like this. She wishes she could protect Gabby from what’s coming, her own death and the ones that will follow. And, yeah, she wishes she could protect herself too. She just doesn’t know who she needs protecting from.

It’s a problem, her place in all this. She’s not on Xena’s side, but being here means she’s not on Athena’s either. She’s caught in the middle because she refuses to choose, trapped between two very different kinds of love, with maybe a dozen more thrown into the mix too. Xena loves Eve, her daughter; Athena loved Zeus, her father. No-one can pit so many different kinds of love against each other and expect a happy ending, and Aphrodite feels like she’s the only person in the world who understands that there’s only one way out of this.

Gabrielle would understand too, if she wasn’t unconscious and bleeding and dying. If not for Athena, if not for the Furies messing around inside her head, making her do things she never would by choice. That’s another thought that makes Aphrodite feel sick: they used her to _kill_ , or try to. Her little one, her Gabby, the sweet-souled bard who would never hurt anyone without a good reason, driven to the most terrible thing by forces outside her control. Aphrodite isn’t capable of hatred, but it’s so close it almost burns her when she looks at Athena now.

Why wouldn’t she listen to her? If she’d just left the poor bard alone, maybe Aphrodite wouldn’t be alone too.

Gabrielle was never meant to be a part of this. This mess, this war, this _thing_ … it’s about Eve and the Olympian gods, and that makes it about Xena by default. Xena, who can kill gods. Xena, who took the first life, who transformed a _thing_ into a war. She’s the one who turned it from a matter of survival to a mess of death and pain on both sides; she changed the colour of immortal blood, and now all of Olympus is shaking. She must have known that it would happen; she must have seen the price to be paid for protecting her spawn.

If Xena really cared about Gabrielle, she would have sent her away before she started. She would have driven her off by force if necessary. She would have left her in that ice cave to sleep in peace for another twenty-five years. She would have done whatever it took, _whatever it took_ to keep the bard out of this. That’s what Aphrodite would have done; that’s what she tried to do.

Xena didn’t, though. Because… because, okay, yeah, maybe that’s love too. It’s selfish just like she is and it’s blind just like Ares is, and it makes people do terrible, awful, _stupid_ things, things they’ll regret for the rest of their lives. Aphrodite knows that Xena won’t ever forgive herself for what she did here tonight, not to the gods but to Gabby, the gash she put in her head, the blood pouring out of it, the terrible rattle in her chest when she loses her last breath. She’ll have nightmares about this for years, if she lives that long, but she knows as well as Aphrodite does that it was love that made her do it.

Sure as anything, that’s what it was. There’s no love in the world more powerful than a mother’s love for her child; Xena might not know the first thing about her daughter, but some things are as inevitable as time. She could no more have stilled her hand before that chakram flew than Aphrodite could turn back time and force Athena to leave the bard out of this.

“I should’ve protected you better,” she admits out loud, knowing that Gabrielle can’t hear her. “You and me, sweet pea, we’re worlds apart from all of this. I should’ve made sure it stayed that way.”

It’s true. Not just the apology, but the idea behind it. They _are_ worlds apart, her and Gabby, in a way that no-one else will ever really understand. Maybe that’s why the bard means so much to her, why Aphrodite longs so desperately to take her away from the dark places Xena keeps taking her. Aphrodite loves the warrior babe too, of course — well, who wouldn’t, when she’s got that irresistible ‘warrior musk’ thing going on? — but it’s different with Gabby. It’s so, so different.

Gabrielle is special. Like, _really_ special. Special in a way that so few mortals are, the impossible way that makes the stars twist and bend until they’re not stars any more, until they’re something more. When Aphrodite looks at her, the universe rewrites itself, secrets no-one else will ever hear whispering and murmuring inside her head. No mortal should have that kind of power, but somehow Gabby does.

Yeah, okay, so Aphrodite’s got it bad. Big news, right? Doesn’t make it any less true. She’s seen enough other mortals fall for the bard to know it is.

To tell the truth, that kind of magical specialness is exactly how Aphrodite sees herself too, at least most of the time. Like, not that she’s the kind to brag or anything, but yeah, she’s sorta impossible too. In the more-so-than-other-goddesses way, even, not that she’d ever say so to Athena. It’s the same thing she sees in Gabrielle, but of course there’s no coincidence in that; being the living manifestation of that impossible feeling, it’s just part of the job description that mortals from Thrace to Thessaly would fall over themselves to get close to her.

The burden of beauty, inside and out, is her thing to endure, just as it is Gabby’s. It’s not always easy, being loved all the time, worshipped by people who never get to see your flaws; most days it’s a thrill, but sometimes it’s a drag. Sometimes she just wants someone to look past the goddess and see the other kind of perfection shimmering under it, the one that Gabby sees almost without even looking, the one that she has in herself too. They could talk about it for hours, Aphrodite thinks, if they only had more time.

Looks like that’s running out now, though. For both of them. Aphrodite’s days are numbered no matter how this fight ends; the only way Xena and Eve can win is by slaughtering every god on Olympus, herself included, and if Athena comes out on top she’ll burn her as a traitor. And as for Gabrielle…

Well, that’s even worse, and not just for the suffering bard. It’s worse for Aphrodite too, because she has to sit here and watch it happen, helpless and frightened and knowing that she can’t do anything to make it better, to even ease the pain a little. Gabby is still breathing, at least mostly, but it’s getting shallower and slower, every exhale coming with fluttering eyelashes and whimpers, the pain strangling on her tongue. She’s suffering, struggling, straining to just keep breathing, all without surfacing even once. Aphrodite knows what that means, where it’s going, but she’s as much a victim of the Fates this time as Gabrielle.

There’s so much blood. Aphrodite knew that already, of course, but she forces herself to look down now and see it properly, not just as something icky and mortal and gross, but as _life_. That’s Gabby’s life, that icky mess, and it’s rushing out of her like it’s worthless, like it’s not the most precious, wonderful thing in the whole world. It mats in Gabrielle’s hair, turning the cornsilk gold into something red and brutal, and it stains her skin too until she looks as much a warrior as Xena. It covers the floor and the walls; it would cover Aphrodite’s hands and clothes too, if she wasn’t immune to the stuff. It’s _everywhere_ , and Aphrodite is floored by how much it frightens her.

She’s seen plenty of blood in her time, of course. As close as she is with Ares, a few bleeding mortals are kind of inevitable every now and then. But it’s never really struck her like this before, the finality of it, the pain behind each gurgling pulse. Maybe it’s got something to do with the whole _‘Xena can kill us now’_ thing, the fact that it’ll be her own blood staining the walls soon enough, but the part of Aphrodite that knows her trade realises that it’s not only that. It’s that this blood — this icky, gross, mortal mess — belongs to Gabby. Like, it came out of her. Like, it’s _still_ coming out of her, right before her eyes.

Aphrodite’s stomach seethes in rhythm with the pulses, a faint imitation of mortal vertigo. It feels like a part of her is bleeding too, like her veins are made of something less than they are, and while she’s never been the most erudite goddess up on Olympus (at least, not without good reason), she finds that what few words would normally come to her are nowhere to be found.

So then, knowing there’s nothing she can say to make this better, knowing there’s no other way of expressing what she feels, she wrinkles her nose and says, “Ew.”

It’s all she has, that ditzy blonde facade, the screwed-up face and the cheap lingo, the worthless, wasteful pretence that she’s too stupid to care. She can’t say ‘ _please stop bleeding, please stop hurting, please stop dying’_ , and she can’t say ‘ _I’m going to look like that too after your warrior babe gets her hands on me’._ She can’t say any of the terrible terrifying things she’s thinking, because she’s a goddess and saying things might make them true. All she can do is fall back on the one thing that’s always served her well, the one thing that has never, ever lets her down.

 _“Don’t let the blonde hair fool you,”_ she said one time, and had to fight to keep from laughing because it was so obvious Gabby couldn’t comprehend the idea that there might actually be a working brain between her perfect goddess’s ears. Not that anyone could blame her for being a little dubious,; there’s not too many who can pull off looks and brains at the same time, after all. And, well, it’s not Gabrielle’s fault that her perspective is so small and sheltered and adorably mortal.

Aphrodite likes playing dumb. It presents a particular kind of image, and one that fits in neatly with her line of work. It makes people look at her a certain way, like she’s stupid — which, whatever, there are worse things to be — but also trustworthy. She really digs that. You can’t get fooled by a fool, the mortals say, and she’s more than happy to spend her days playing one. It makes people happy, makes them smile, and isn’t that what she’s there for?

It never seems to make Gabrielle smile. Of course, unconscious as she is right now, nothing does, but even when she’s conscious she never laughed at her antics like the other mortals do. Most of the time Aphrodite’s behaviour just makes her frown, like she can’t understand why anyone would choose to be that way if they could be someone else. She likes things complex and heavy, poetic enough to scribble down on a scroll and Aphrodite’s illusions of simplicity confuse her like woah.

Not gonna lie, she always kind of got a kick out of that.

Gabrielle’s eyelids are fluttering again, like she’s fighting her unconsciousness, desperate to come back. Aphrodite feels a very different kind of kick at the sight of that, a pounding drum in her chest that screams _‘don’t do that’_. She doesn’t want Gabby conscious, doesn’t want her to look around and see what’s happened to the world she loves so much. She doesn’t want to be the one to explain that Xena did this to her, that her beloved warrior babe hurt her and cut her and made her bleed, that she might well have killed her. There are enough broken hearts out there at the moment, and Gabby is already in more than enough pain; Aphrodite doesn’t want to be responsible for more of either.

“It’s okay,” she soothes, pressing a palm to the bloodiest part of her head. Gabrielle’s body doesn’t move, but her eyes do. Aphrodite feels it right down to her bones. “It’s all right, little one. I’m here.”

The words awaken something inside of her, a long-buried memory of when Cupid was a baby, over-stimulated all the time and always refusing to sleep. She wonders if Xena will kill him too, if she’ll feel it when the moment comes. She wonders if it’ll be so easy to feel love and compassion for the warrior babe after she does.

This is different, though. Cupid’s her son, and Gabby… well, she’s decidedly not. She’s her buddy, her bestie, her _mortal_. Or… okay, so technically she’s Xena’s mortal, not that that’s ever stopped Aphrodite thinking about it. She never stood a chance, she knew that from the get-go, but a fantasy is a fine thing sometimes, and up till now it’s been more than good enough. The gods might not be the kind of people who accept defeat graciously or whatever, but then Aphrodite’s never been a typical Olympian. Another wonderful side-effect of being the patron deity of something so pure.

So, yeah, she knows this is as close as she’s ever going to get. She’s accepted that, at least for the most part. Being the goddess of love means knowing when someone else’s happiness is more important than your own. If by some wacky miracle Gabrielle does make it through this, she’s not going to waste her gratitude on some washed-up old goddess, no matter how tightly she held her or how sweetly she told her it was okay. She’ll be back in Xena’s arms before Aphrodite’s even gotten a word out. That’s how the cookie crumbles, and isn’t it just her luck that goddesses don’t eat?

Gabrielle groans. She’s trying to stir, but her body doesn’t move; her head shifts ever so slightly, but Aphrodite holds it still, holds her steady. She’s still fighting, still struggling, still trying so hard to come back to a world that wants her gone. That fighter’s spirit could save her life, maybe, but the pain it brings could just as easily kill her. Aphrodite doesn’t want to stick around and find out which one will prevail.

She closes her eyes again, blocking out the blood and the flutter of her eyelids, and rocks Gabrielle in her arms. Slow, tender, not the way she did with Cupid, but the way she’s seen Xena do in private moments when she thinks she and the bard are alone. Aphrodite’s nothing like the warrior babe, of course — what’s a goddess, after all, next to Xena? — but Gabby’s really not in any condition right now to pick and choose who holds her now.

Still, her mouth falls open just a little as though responding to the movement, as though some tiny corner of her finds the familiarity in it. Aphrodite should feel pleased with herself, but she doesn’t; she feels like a fraud, and when Gabby’s lets out another low sound, like she’s trying to speak, she hushes her much too quickly. She knows what Gabrielle would say if she could, and she couldn’t bear to hear the name.

“Shh,” she says, ever so softly. “Go back to sleep.”

That’s just stupid. She knows it’s not really sleep; it’s something far worse, something dangerous. It’s the kind of terrible, all-consuming void that comes with a potentially life-ending injury, the kind of unconsciousness that means terrible consequences whether she wakes or not. Pain might not be Aphrodite’s forte like it is Ares’s, but she knows enough about it to know that dying isn’t the only way Gabby can be lost from this.

She should be encouraging her to stay conscious. She knows that. She should be saying _‘stay with me’_ or _‘don’t let go’_ or _‘focus on my voice’_ , anything she can think of to bring her back, to break through to whatever part of her slashed-up brain is still working. Xena would do that, she knows, but Aphrodite is not Xena. She’s just a cowardly god who can’t endure pain.

Well, that makes two of them, at least. Gabby doesn’t seem to be handling it particularly well either. The pain is a physical, visceral thing, deepening the creases and furrows on her face until Aphrodite could score them out with her nails. When they first met, so long ago, there wasn’t a single line on her face. Not a one. Now, they mark out a map, telling the tales she can’t, the songs she’ll never share. Aphrodite commits them all to memory, shapes them into new stories inside her heart. If she survives this, she’ll make sure the other bards sing of Gabrielle.

It’s so sad, and it tears her apart to know that in the end that might be the only thing she can do. It’s not enough, but at least it’s something. That’s what Gabby would tell her. _At least you did something_.

She wants more. Selfish, shallow, stupid as she is, she wants everything. She wants to knit Gabrielle’s skull back together, or else make it hurt less, make the pain easier, make it so that she’s at peace when she finally goes. She wants to reshape this terrible, twisted, tragic unconsciousness into something that really is just sleep, something Gabby can wake from.

 _‘I had the craziest dream,’_ she’ll say when she does, all smiles and beauty, and Aphrodite will listen and laugh and tell her to save it for one of her silly scrolls.

 _Would_. Not _will_. Because, yeah, that’s not gonna happen. If Gabby does wake from this, she won’t be smiling or beautiful. She’ll be broken, damaged maybe beyond repair. And if she doesn’t wake…

 _No._ No, she can’t let herself think like that. One of them has to be the cock-eyed optimist in all of this. One of them has to play Gabby’s role. She’s usually the blithe one, the one with the quick words and the hope, hiding her pain and her fear behind bravado and laughter. Bravado isn’t a pretty thing, and laughter can be such an ugly sound; they’re both gangly and oversized and, more often than not, just accentuate the flaws they’re trying to hide. Aphrodite would never wear such silly costumes by choice.

Lucky for her, then, that she’s dressed in black today. It’s the one colour that can make anything look good. Even someone else’s false optimism.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she says again and again and again. “Whatever happens. If we win, I’ll be able to heal you. Athena’s not, like, a total monster. Once Eve’s out of the picture, once she’s not scared for her life or whatever, she’ll see sense again. She’s not beyond saving, Gabby, you’ll see. She’ll totally let me heal you if she wins. She will. She…”

Gabrielle doesn’t say anything, but Aphrodite imagines accusation beneath those fluttering eyelids.

 _All right,_ she wants to scream. _Fine! Athena will never let me heal you, no matter what happens. But you know what? Neither will your precious Xena. She might be able to kill us all, but she’s still mortal. She’s just like you, Gabby, weak and mortal and… and it doesn’t matter what happens out there, does it? You and I, we’re doomed. You’re gonna die here, and I’m gonna watch it, and then I’m gonna die too._

She doesn’t say it. She can’t. The words suffocate inside of her, deathly still in this quiet place she found, this little room away from all the fighting. She knows that it doesn’t matter, that she doesn’t need to say it out loud; mind-reader or not, Gabrielle has always had an uncanny knack for sensing things like this, and whatever part of her is still herself must surely sense Aphrodite’s feelings now. Isn’t that what drew her to the little bard in the first place?

At the very least, her body responds as if it does. Her body tightens a little, the effort of someone trying to shake themselves out of sleep paralysis. She still can’t really move, but the cells in her small, mortal body give her away; Aphrodite can feel the desperation in every synapse, every molecule.

“Oh, Gabby…” she sighs. Goddesses have no need for prayer, of course, but Gabrielle’s name tastes so much like one on her tongue. “It has to be okay. I gotta believe it will. If you were sitting here and I was lying there, we both know you’d tell me that. You’d smile down at me, all pretty and mortal and whatever, and you’d say, _‘hey, wipe that frown off your face, you’ll get wrinkles’_.” She thinks about that, then shakes her head. “Okay, fine, so maybe I’d be the one saying that. You’d just, like, roll your eyes or something. But hey, same diff, right?”

It’s not. It’s not at all.

Gabrielle’s eyelids flutter one last time, then still completely. She’s getting worse, Aphrodite can tell, and wonders how she knows that. Unconsciousness is unconsciousness; it should look the same whatever way you slice it, at least to a goddess who’s never had to think about it. Aphrodite has never much cared for that sort of nuance before, never had any reason to look below the surface, but she does it now and what she sees there terrifies her.

She can feel it inside of her, not like she felt her struggling — that’s just normal, the natural attunement of complex gods and simple mortals — but like she felt it when Zeus died, when Olympus trembled and the world tilted on its axis, when everything changed forever. She feels it not just in her body, the parts of her that can see and hear and feel things beyond mortal comprehension, but in her heart and her soul as well, those strange places where the gods are blind and mortals are the ones who can see.

“Not long now, little one…” she says, and wishes gods could shed tears.

She doesn’t know what to do, how to make it easier for either one of them. If she were a mortal, she could lean in and breathe the life back into her, but she’s not mortal and she doesn’t have lungs. How is she supposed to share her breath if she doesn’t have any? How is she supposed to give away something she never had? She’s never had to wonder about these things before; she could fix any mortal malady with a smile and a wave of her hand. Now, with that gift stripped from her, she’s more powerless than they are.

Still, because Gabby is one of them, because Aphrodite knows the gesture would mean something to her, she tries. 

Breath or no breath, it has to be better than sitting around waiting to die.

Gabrielle’s lips are very cold when she finds them with her own. Her breathing is so shallow and slow that Aphrodite can barely find her breath at all. She’s not sure what she expects to achieve — even if she did have breath of her own to give, what good would it do when the wound is in her skull? — but she has to try something, and this is the purest, truest, most mortal thing she can think of.

They call it the ‘kiss of life’. It’s a silly name, really — Aphrodite knows better than most how vast the difference is between putting your mouth on someone and really kissing them — but then, mortals are such silly things themselves. It shouldn’t surprise her that they would turn to acts of love in times of pain and grief and loss, that hers is the name they invoke when desperation and despair try to drown them. Love can make the most helpless, hopeless mortals believe themselves gods; Aphrodite’s the only power in the world that can defy war and wisdom and even death. Sometimes, anyhow. Like, not today, but sometimes.

So, yeah. Maybe it is a silly name, but it’s kind of fitting too. Touching, in a way she’s never really thought about, that they would breathe the life back into a dying body and call it a kiss.

Aphrodite doesn’t have any life or breath to give. But _oh_ , she has kisses.

That’s another quaint little obsession the mortals have: ‘True Love’s Kiss’. More powerful than anything else in the world, they say, and Aphrodite knows they’re right; the power of feeling can make anything real, even when the laws of the world say otherwise. She’s heard the stories they sing about it, about _her_ , about all the glorious, impossible things that Love’s kisses can overcome even in those dark, desolate moments when the kiss of life is not enough.

Yesterday, it was all true. Every last word of it. Yesterday, Aphrodite could move mountains and oceans with her kisses, with her emotions, with her _love_. She could rewrite the laws of the world, could heal the sick and mend the broken, could revive the dying with the press of her lips. She could do anything she set her imagination to, and of course her imagination was endless. Yesterday, there were no limits to what True Love’s Kiss could do.

Today…

Today, Gabrielle is unconscious and in pain. Today, the little bard is dying and soon the goddess of love will join her. Today, the world has changed. The gods are being cut down by mortals, led by a madwoman who has lost her way. Athena is blind and angry, and the rest of them are crippled without her blessings. All of a sudden, for the very first time, there are limits to everything. In its own way, that’s almost more frightening that Xena’s god-killing chakram.

Once, Aphrodite could have saved Gabrielle’s life with a kiss like this, could have closed the wound in her head and undone the damage inside, all with the power of her lips. Once, bending over her, kissing her, _loving her_ , would have been enough to save her life and her spirit, would have brought her back from the brink and left her healed and whole and as beautiful as ever. Gabrielle would wake up, look at her, and smile.

Now, when Aphrodite pulls back to look at her handiwork, things are exactly as they were before. Gabrielle is still unconscious, still in pain, still dying. Kissing her hasn’t changed anything.

And so she tries again. And then again. Over and over, desperately, like maybe it’s not just Gabrielle’s life she’s trying to save, like maybe this is her own salvation as well, a kiss of life to save the goddess of love. Gnarly, right?

She feels so _mortal_ , desperately trying to breathe so that this silly young mortal might breathe too, hoping and praying for impossible things because hope and prayer are so much better than the alternative, because Gabby can’t die like this, because Aphrodite can’t lose her like this, because she has to believe that the best of them will survive. Her kisses are powerless now, she knew that before she started, but they are still true and they still come from love. It’s all she can do. Even now, it’s all she can do.

And really, isn’t it that way for the others too? Isn’t Xena doing the very same thing, murdering gods and goddesses and whatever else stands in her way, murdering _Gabrielle_ in the name of her precious daughter? Isn’t Athena doing the same thing too, blind and vengeful and grief-crazed, tearing Olympus apart to avenge her fallen father?

It’s in all of them, the need to do terrible, stupid, nonsensical things for love, and it’s only fitting that it would be Aphrodite’s downfall in the end. She is their goddess, after all, the only one who can see the light and the hope in times as dark as this, and she holds on to those things as tightly as she can. Not just because she has to, not just because it’s all she has, but because Gabrielle would want her to do it.

It’s not the kiss of life. It may well be True Love’s Kiss, but it won’t save anyone. It’s not enough, and it doesn’t deserve some special name; it’s just a stupid, self-indulgent kiss masquerading as something important. It’s the kind of delusion that people only feel when they know there’s nothing else. It’s helplessness and hopelessness and desperation. It’s a million things Aphrodite thought she would never see, never know, never feel, and it is not enough.

Yesterday, True Love’s Kiss was worth more than the kiss of life. Today, it’s worth less than nothing.

And for the first time in millennia, so is she.

—


End file.
